Arrow: "City of Heroes"Review

It's been true for many years that, while Marvel may dominate DC when it comes to big-budget superhero movies, DC has the edge when it comes to television. And that remains true even as Marvel has made a giant leap into live-action superhero TV with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. For now, at least, Arrow is the far superior series. It makes better use of the source material and now has the benefit of building on an entire season's worth of character evolution and plot progression.

Arrow ended on a very strong note with the Season 1 finale, "Sacrifice," which easily ranked among the best of the series. Season 2 looks poised to carry that momentum forward thanks to a strong opener. "City of Heroes" wasted little time throwing Ollie and his friends back into the thick of things, and it introduced two intriguing new female characters to boot.

As we saw right away, Ollie is still reeling even five months after his failure in "Sacrifice." He failed to completely stop Malcolm Merlyn's Undertaking, and he failed to save Tommy's life. In a neat little twist, that caused him to exile himself back to the island he spent five years trying to escape from. It was almost surprising that this episode didn't revolve solely around Diggle and Felicity's efforts to bring him back. The episode could have worked with that simpler approach, but ultimately the faster pace was appreciated. It was fun to see Felicity unwillingly forced to play the action hero for a bit. Too many of her early appearances focused solely on her talent at being a scatterbrained computer whiz, and it's always nice to see the writers branch out and give her something new to contend with.

Once back in Starling City, it was immediately obvious how much of an impact the Undertaking had had on the Glades. This episode nicely addressed one of the show's recurring problems in that it did finally portray the Glades as a dank, seedy place full of suffering people. In general, this episode seemed to showcase the city with a bit more scope and detail. Hopefully that's something that will remain consistent over the coming months.

This episode found plenty of mileage in examining how much the various characters' lives have changed over the past five months. And for the most part, the changes were for the better. Thea especially seemed to benefit from her new role as manager of Club Verdant and the newly strained relationship with her mother. Willa Holland has never been one of the stronger actors on the show, but at least this episode gave her some much more dramatic material to work with. Likewise, Roy Harper stood out as a man obsessed with beating justice into the scum of the Glades but lacking the direction and guidance he really needs at this stage. It should be interesting to see how long it takes for Roy to reconnect with his vigilante role model. But as the last-minute appearance of Black Canary suggested, he might find a different mentor entirely.

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The one character whose new status quo didn't quite satisfy was Laurel. While her anger over Tommy's death is understandable, having her do a complete 180 in terms of her relationship with the Hood seemed forced. And her new position as Assistant District Attorney does nothing to dissuade the idea that she's simply Arrow's version of Rachel Dawes. On the other hand, it was fun to see the Lance family dynamic completely reversed now, with Quentin demoted to beat cop and showing full support for his former nemesis while his daughter leads a one-woman crusade against him.

As for Ollie himself, this episode did a great job of both exploring his emotional fallout and establishing his new purpose now that the whole "crossing names out of a book" thing is done for. The show attracted a fair amount of controversy last season because of the cavalier way Ollie was willing to take lives in the heat of battle. This episode went a long way towards addressing that by forcing Ollie to realize that there are better ways of saving lives and inspiring others to do good. His assertion that to take lives is a dishonor to Tommy's memory was a nice touch. And I'm sure this vow of non-lethality will be sorely tested in the weeks to come.

Summer Glau's Isabel Rochev looks to be a significant new character, and she featured prominently in the premiere. With her prior sci-fi TV experience, Glau easily fit right in opposite Ollie and his friends. It was hard to get a sense of exactly how antagonistic her relationship to Ollie will be this season. But it seems that the writers will at least be painting her in a more evenhanded light than the comic book version, who was more of an overt villain to Ollie despite her noble intentions for Queen Consolidated. This show usually doesn't make the mistake of drawing a firm line between good and evil characters. Not with the major villains, anyway.

On that note, another weak element of this episode involved the copycat vigilantes. This show has always had a problem when it comes to fleshing out the minor, non-recurring antagonists. And even though this group was comprised of ordinary Glades citizens who were wronged by the Merlyns and Queens, it was hard to sympathize with them. They were poorly developed and suffered from bad overacting. Like most villains of this sort, they were more plot devices than anything else.

A few other thoughts to close out this review:

As usual, the island flashbacks were entertaining, but it would have been nice to see more of Ollie, Shado, and Slade to get a sense for where their conflict is heading. Ollie's act of killing might have complemented the main story thread, but it seemed a bit random in the context of the flashbacks alone.

Black Canary sure can handle herself in a fight, but her costume kind of sucks. This is why Ollie doesn't wear a domino mask.

Moira looked pretty ripped when she visited her children in prison. Maybe she's secretly Black Canary?

It seems Ollie finally will be using a real and proper superhero name. Thank goodness, because it was getting really old calling him "The Hood" or "The Vigilante" all the time.

All in all, "City of Heroes" was a nice, eventful way to kick off the new season. Ollie and the gang certainly have plenty of challenges to tackle over the next several months.